


Enigma

by papercinders



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Strangers to Lovers, medium burn if that's a thing, the angst is strong with this one but what do you expect from a post-rots fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26429290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papercinders/pseuds/papercinders
Summary: In the wake of the fall of the Republic, a lonely traveler arrives in Tatooine. He is alone, but speaks to ghosts; empty-handed, but carries a burden.Or: five times you ask Obi-Wan who he is, and the one time he tells you.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Reader
Comments: 45
Kudos: 169





	1. Wanderer

The first time you meet him is in a musty cantina on Tatooine, hung with the scent of dried sweat and watered-down alcohol. The air is still. Lazy. Particles of dust spin in the sunlight that streams through the angled blinds of the only window.

A cup of something foul is set before you, but only because the owner will kick you out of the establishment if you don’t buy something. The drink goes untouched. It’s an excuse to sit in a dim corner of the cantina and spend the afternoon inside, away from the thick heat of Tatooine’s binary suns. If only for a little while, you’re content to drift into a glassy-eyed, passive mode of pure observation.

When he steps through the doors of the cantina, stopping just past the threshold as the doors close behind him, the first thing you notice is his boots. They’re clean. Then you take in the surety of his posture, even if he is unmoving at the front of the cantina. A beard, but trimmed; coarse clothing, but neat; guarded eyes, but not cruel. _Bounty hunter_ , you decide, but then again, the galaxy is brimming with so many people it’s impossible to pinpoint whether the newcomer is a trader passing through Mos Eisley or a smuggler collecting a shipment of spice or simply another face in a crowd of people who somehow wash up on Tatooine and end up stuck.

It doesn’t matter where he’s from. Everyone gets used to the sand and the sweat and the sunburn. Eventually, at least.

A cloak trails behind him as he strides through the cantina, boots barely scuffing against the floor. His hands are not hidden nor gloved, you notice, and you decide that he is not a bounty hunter, a smuggler, or a mechanic. He is the kind of riddle that you would like to solve, but your interest is passive.

The stranger disappears from your line of sight, and you lean back against the corner of the wall. It’s getting late, judging by the gold-tinted line of light on the ground, from where sunlight seeps through the sliver of space between the door and the wall.

There’s the slight murmur of voices, and then the cloaked, empty-handed stranger emerges again, escorted by the owner of the bar. You catch him say _Jundland wastes_ and _guide_ , and then your interest is piqued. The newcomer’s clean boots and clothing must have caught the eye of the cantina owner, partly because a newcomer means an easy scam and partly because nice clothing means good coin. Even if the stranger doesn’t know it, whoever the cantina owner presents as a guide to the Jundland wastes will surely charge an exorbitant fee. It’s common practice. Mos Eisley isn’t known for being nice.

But some part of you doesn’t want to let the stranger get abandoned in the middle of the desert, all his earnings stolen, scammed and left for dead. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t fit in with the sand and the scum of Tatooine, even if his clothing is woven of coarse cloth and doesn’t look like it belongs on Coruscant or Alderaan, either. Maybe it’s because he walks without hiding his hands or his face, or simply because he doesn’t seem to harbor much fear. He might be an honest fool. He might not be.

You don’t really know why you do it ― later, a collection of words can quantify your reasons, but for now, you aren’t entirely sure why you stand and cross the short distance to the stranger and the cantina owner.

“The Wastes are crawling with Tusken Raiders,” the owner is saying, in a gravelly rasp, as you draw near. “Five hundred credits is cheap. No one’ll do that work for less.”

“I’ll do it for free,” you cut in, and you’re still not sure why you’ve taken such an interest in this stranger. Are you so far gone that decent hygiene will compel you to stick out your neck for someone you haven’t even met? Still, you can’t shake the feeling that there’s something different about him.

The stranger and the owner have gone silent, both pairs of eyes sliding over to look at you. There’s something murderous in the narrowed eyes of the surly cantina owner, but that’s to be expected. You just foiled his scam. Slowly, you turn to the stranger, as if finally making eye contact with him is like spoiling the end of a story.

His eyes are blue, you notice, and his brow is furrowed in slight confusion. He holds your gaze for a moment longer, as if you are the riddle and not him, and then turns back to the cantina owner.

The owner is indignant, looking you over as if to reconcile your words with the unobtrusive nature of your appearance. “And who’re you?”

You glance at the newcomer, and his eyes pin you there for a moment. You smile. “A friend. Or at least, I’m friendly enough to stop an innocent traveler from being scammed.”

The owner arranges his face into something slightly less murderous. He fumbles for words. Finds them, after a few moments. “Scammed?” He pauses to huff. “It’s dangerous out there. This ― this _girl_ can’t protect you from Tusken Raiders.”

You open your mouth to defend yourself, but the stranger speaks before you can.

“Oh, I’m not concerned about raiders,” he says, and his voice is carried by a lovely accent that sounds so... _un_ -Tatooine. There’s some kind of playful music in the tones of his voice, though subtle. Coruscanti, you speculate, but you’ve never even been to Coruscant.

“If you wanna risk it,” the cantina owner says, when he has no response. “I warned you.” He’s met with silence, and his eyes shift to you and the stranger, almost accusatory. “If you’re not gonna buy anything, stop loitering.”

“I bought a drink,” you point out, more out of spite than anything, motioning to your booth in the corner of the cantina, abandoned drink still untouched.

“He hasn’t,” the owner replies, and levels a look at you. It’s not like you threatened his family or tried to steal from him, but then again, in Mos Eisley, hindering business is considered its equivalent anyway.

“Fair enough.” You meet the eyes of the stranger and then nod to the doors, and he follows close behind as you exit the establishment. You won’t be returning to this cantina, but it’s not like you were ever thrilled by the dim interior or the simultaneously tasteless and foul alcohol.

As soon as the doors slide shut and the stranger pulls up next to you, passing a glance over, you speak. “Who are you?”

His eyebrows pull together almost imperceptibly, eyes dropping to the ground and then back to your face. “Who am I?” he repeats, and something resembling a smile tugs at the corners of his lips; but it fades as soon as it appears, along with the look in his eyes that makes you wonder all the more. He finds the words he’s looking for. “Just a wanderer. Now, you can lead me through the Jundland Wastes?”

You nod, still trying to place what his occupation is. _Wanderers_ don’t wash up on Tatooine with Inner Rim accents and clean boots. Wanderers don’t look for guides to lead them to specific places, even if the Wastes are vast and empty.

“There’s something I have to get from my ship,” he says. “I hope you don’t mind.”

You pause for a moment as his eyes search yours. “I don’t,” you say, “as long as you tell me your name.”

His lips curve into a slight smile, and this time it doesn’t fade nearly as soon. And perhaps it reaches his eyes, too. He’s silent for a few seconds before he tells you his name, voice low against the soft hum of Mos Eisley. A single syllable: “Ben.”

You repeat his name aloud, and though it’s just a name ― unobtrusive, uncomplicated ― it somehow feels significant. He smiles again when you say it, eyes crinkling up in the slightest, but he doesn’t ask for your name in return. It could be because you’re just his guide, but you’d like to think it’s because he’s noticed you haven’t offered it and doesn’t want to inquire.

 _Ben_. It’s not the answer to the riddle, but it’s something. For a moment longer, his gaze is warm ― not hot, like Tatooine at midday, but warm. Then he turns back to the road, glances back to confirm you’ll follow, and sets off toward his ship.

You follow close behind, wondering what business he has with Tatooine; what he wants from this world of dust and deserted dreams.

//

The ship is situated past the outskirts of Mos Eisley, and sand whips past your face as you make the short trek to the starfighter that lies on the crest of a sand dune. In the warm light of late afternoon, the ship’s metal ridges glint gold.

He ― Ben ― tells you to stop before you draw near to the ship, and you comply silently, watching as he goes the remainder of the way to his ship, the edge of his cloak dragging in the sand. He’s been quiet for your short journey here, hardly saying more than necessary, but you get the feeling that he’s usually more talkative.

You’re not close enough to the starfighter to decide what kind of model it is, but it doesn’t look like the kind of makeshift, ill-repaired vessel that bounty hunters and smugglers travel by. Perhaps he’s involved in something equally as lucrative but still legal ― at this point, you’ve decided that he’s not a fugitive and not involved in semi-illegal operations. But even though legal and wealthy aren’t usually synonymous on Tatooine, you suppose it’s possible. He isn’t from here, anyway.

Ben returns, arms cradling a bundle of something wrapped in cloth. He holds it close to his chest as he climbs the rest of the way back to you, and then merely nods once. _Let’s go_ , he seems to say, and whatever he’s holding must be important, because the tentative friendliness you built up before is set aside in lieu of some odd mix of caution and haste.

You turn to lead the way back to Mos Eisley ― there, you can buy better transportation ― but a soft cry breaks the silence. It’s simultaneously unfamiliar and universally recognizable.

“Is that a baby?” you say carefully, turning back around to face Ben.

He hugs the bundle to himself, as if you pose some kind of threat. Ben’s eyes search yours, and it’s the first time you’ve seen any kind of uncertainty in him. Even if you’ve only known him for a few hours at most. He clears his throat. “It is.”

A litany of questions threaten to spill from your lips, but you notice that he doesn’t offer any more information. You can’t help it, though. You have to know. The question is blunt, and it even makes you cringe, but you ask it anyway: “Are you a slaver?”

Ben recoils almost instantly, looking from you to the baby, still hidden from your view by layers of cloth and the extra fabric of his cloak. “No,” he says, and the word is forceful but not forced. “Why...why would you think that?”

You shrug, shift nervously for a moment, and then decide that you might as well tell the truth. You motion to him with a vague hand. “You’re not poor, obviously, and you have a nice ship. You’re not from Tatooine, but you’re passing through, looking for a single location. And you carry a baby, though something about _it_ makes you uncomfortable.”

The last part was a guess, but you didn’t anticipate that he would react with a visible flinch, features twisting for barely a moment. It’s brief, but you suppose there is something important about this infant that he carries so protectively and yet so wearily.

You’re met with silence, if you don’t count the constant blowing of wind over the sand dunes or the soft noise of Mos Eisley nearby.

“I apologize,” you say, when the pause extends a beat too long. “I overstepped my bounds. Come on. We should leave now to get to Anchorhead before dark.”

He nods, almost imperceptibly, and you lead the way back to Mos Eisley, silently berating yourself. There could be a number of reasons why he has a baby, and an even longer list of reasons why there might be complicated feelings surrounding the baby. It’s not your place to pry. You offered to take Ben through the Jundland Wastes free of charge just because he intrigued you, but now you wonder if it would have been better had you stayed silent.

A few minutes later, you’re surprised to hear his voice. “He’s not my son,” Ben says, and you turn to look at him, faltering in your steps for a moment, though his gaze is fixed ahead firmly. “His father was killed. In the war.”

 _Oh_. You know people who were affected by the war, of course, but there are some things that are too tragic to reconcile with words alone, some things that go beyond your capacity for comfort. What’s left is a void of numbness and dumb silence, and you scramble for something to say. How do you give your condolences for a son who will never know his father?

“I…” you start uncertainly, because you know that you have to start somewhere, but words still fail you. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” Ben’s voice is soft and low, and he looks at the face of the baby in his arms. “So am I.”

You wonder if this is the end of the story, the answer to the riddle; if this sorrow is what marks him apart from the rest, if this burden is what renders him alone. Perhaps there’s more ― he hasn’t told you his occupation, or where he comes from, or the model of his ship ― or perhaps there isn’t.

“What’s his name?” The question tumbles from your mouth, clumsily, and you immediately wonder when you’ll finally learn your lesson to stop prying.

But just as surprising as before, Ben answers. “Luke,” he says, and like his own, the name is simple, a single syllable, a lone note on a sheet of music.

You don’t know what lies behind either of their names, but there is a brand of steadfastness in the quiet solitude of the wanderer and his ward and the names he has given to you. It’s more of who he is ― his voice, his eyes, his disposition ― that intrigues you than the names themselves. He could have given you any name, you realize, and his voice would have made it sound like the first note of a song. You would have wanted to hear more, either way.

Before, when he told you his name, there had been some kind of wistful nostalgia associated with it ― he had smiled, even ― but his eyes are more sorrow than memory. The Clone Wars are over, now, but only within the last week. You wonder where Ben comes from, how he knew Luke’s father, whether it was Separatist or Republic forces who orphaned a child in the last days of the war.

“Come on,” you say softly, picking your feet up off the sand and angling yourself toward Mos Eisley. The sun hangs between the horizon and the sky overhead. “We should get going.”

“Alright,” Ben says, even if you have the inkling of an idea that things aren’t.

But you remind yourself that it’s not your place to pry, so you tear your eyes away from his, trying to ignore the contrast between the clear blue of his eyes and the endless expanse of sand and sun. You forge ahead toward Mos Eisley, but you can’t forget the still image of Ben framed in the glow of two stars, the edge of his face traced in waning gold sunlight.

You also can’t shake the feeling that he is meant for far more than still deserts and oppressive suns and seas of sand. You try to picture him somewhere else and you can’t place an exact location. But you’re almost certain that in some other life ― in a parallel universe, perhaps ― he is more than just a wanderer.


	2. Exile

By the time you reach the farm, night has almost fallen. It’s not cold, but compared to the blistering heat of day, Tatooine by night is pleasant. The sky is painted in strokes of bluish gray and amber, the brighter of the two stars following the other as it sinks below the horizon. Soon, the farmstead will be cast in an expanse of pure darkness.

You hold the reins of the eopies, watching from a distance as Ben carries the bundle to the two silhouettes standing at the edge of their settlement. It’s a humble abode. The landscape is barren. You watch as the infant is passed between them. _His name is Luke_ , you remind yourself.

You wonder who these people are. They take the baby with outstretched hands and little words, and the man wraps an arm around the woman as they turn toward the sunset, as if they are the last people in the galaxy, standing against some insurmountable obstacle. It’s just a baby, you tell yourself. It’s just an orphaned baby, and not even orphaned anymore.

Ben stands there for a moment, cloaked, a dark stain against the residual light of Tatooine’s binary sunset, but only for a moment. Then he turns back toward you, face unreadable, and though he arrived in Tatooine with empty hands, it doesn’t look like he has let go of anything.

When he is near enough for you to call out to him, you hold back words. He stops before you, eyes not meeting yours, and then slowly raises his head to meet your gaze. The world remains silent for another moment, and then ― 

“I haven’t even asked for your name.”

He says it as if you haven’t noticed. To him, you suppose you’re just a speck in a sky of grief. His face seems to fit into the mold of a smile so well, so often, and yet he has shown you little joy. You suspect he is here because of some unspeakable tragedy.

You realize that he is still watching you, and you say your name quietly, as if afraid to give too much of yourself away. Even though names, at their base level, are meaningless ― you learn far more about a person from actions and words ― there is something in that uselessness that makes a name all the more intimate.

Ben pauses for a moment, eyes still holding yours, and then he nods once, a single acknowledgment. “Thank you,” he says, but he does not repeat your name. You wonder why.

He crosses to one of the two eopies and hauls himself over the side of the creature and into the saddle; casts a glance at you from the side, and then dips his head in some form of goodbye.

Before he pulls the reins, the words come pouring out of your mouth. Part of it is genuine curiosity, but the other part of it is some desperate desire for him to stay. You tell yourself it’s because you haven’t figured him out yet. Just like before, you can’t quite explain why you speak. But just like before, you do.

“Where will you go?”

There’s a lull in the breeze, and everything holds its breath before he forms words. Ben searches your eyes. “Here,” he says, and from beneath his cloak, produces a few credits. They clink together. He holds out his hand for you to take the credits.

You look at the offered credits, glinting in the quickly-fading light, and then back to Ben. His hand is still outstretched, open. “I said I’d be your guide for free,” you say, and make no move to take the money.

Slowly, he pulls his hand back and stows the credits away again, still watching you. His eyes are blue like water, or maybe an ocean. You’ve seen bodies of water before, of course, but they don’t exist on Tatooine. At least, not until he arrived.

“Where will I go?” Ben muses, and he finally breaks eye contact, sweeping a gaze over the endless landscape of sand and horizon, interrupted only by the farmstead. “My ship, I suppose. I’ll return the eopies.”

“And after that?”

“After that?” he repeats, glancing at you briefly. His eyes are not wholly troubled, but neither does he seem unburdened or at peace. Exhausted, maybe. He sighs, shoulders rising and falling. “I’ll find somewhere to stay. Somewhere near here.”

“On Tatooine?” you say, and you can’t keep the disbelief from bleeding into your voice. He has a working ship, from the looks of it, enough credits to spare, and no reason to remain on Tatooine. Who would willingly stay here?

Ben is quiet for a beat. “Yes.”

The word _why_ almost slips past your lips unhindered, but you remind yourself that you are still strangers. It’s one thing to know where he is going and how he will get there; it’s another to ask him to explain. Especially when he doesn’t seem keen to answer.

You follow his gaze to the small, round house on the edge of the moisture farm. The couple has disappeared inside with the baby. You wonder what Luke is to Ben; what it meant to take care of him, what it meant to give him up. You have the barest of ideas that he intends to stay on Tatooine for the child, but you wonder why, then, he gave him up in the first place.

“I should leave now,” Ben says.

Both stars have disappeared beneath the horizon. Light still radiates where sky meets land, but with every minute, it is leeched away. Darkness has already rendered the clouds gray and the opposite horizon a palette of muted tones.

Night is falling. He’s right. He should leave now.

But instead, you ask, “You have nowhere to go?” Behind the question is a variety of implications. You hope he takes it at face value. A ship, after all, is not a home.

He hesitates, as if weighing whether he considers a single-pilot starfighter to be sufficient. In the end, the silence stretches on, and you decide for him.

“There’s an extra room at my place,” you say, but your voice is quiet. You’re suddenly aware that you’re offering to let a stranger into your home ― even if your home isn’t much ― and you don’t even know what he does for a living or what his surname is. It’s in a different category than offering to be a guide.

Ben’s brow furrows, and he looks at you as if trying to figure out why you would offer something of yours so freely. “Why?” he asks, and it’s a fair question.

You’re not sure what to say, so you settle on honesty. “A ship is not a home.”

“Do you offer a room to every traveler passing through Tatooine?”

“No,” you say. A pause. “But you’re not a traveler passing through.” You know why he asked the previous question. He’s unsure of your motives; you can read it through more than just his words. “You just…” You search for words to describe what you know of grief. It’s futile. “You seem lost. Alone.”

When there’s more silence, you nearly backtrack, take back all of your words as if they are crumbs you can sweep from the floor and throw away.

But before you can retract your offer, Ben says your name. It sounds strange, unfamiliar ― it has been a long time since anyone has called you anything except _girl_ and _you_ ― but it is a part of you, after all.

“You’ve already been kind to me,” he says, and his voice is soft, even in the slow breeze as it rolls over the sand dunes. “I only need a place to stay for the night. At first light, I’ll be on my way.”

You’re surprised. He doesn’t come across as the kind of person who would accept help without a fight. But then again, he seems tired. Weary. Perhaps a little broken ― or a lot. Maybe, you decide, he has already survived a battle. A war. And maybe that’s why you have given him your time, your home, and your kindness.

The Republic is now the Empire. The war is now the past. It has left behind pieces and shards and ashes, and perhaps it is your job to pick them up. Or perhaps you only tell yourself that because you have no other purpose in this endless, lonely expanse of desert and empty wind.

//

You don’t have much food to offer him, but you don’t bother apologizing. You know he’ll say that he doesn’t mind. You know he’ll bring up the fact that you’ve offered your home up to a stranger.

The truth is, it’s not really a home ― you throw around the term because it’s loosely accurate, but _house_ is a better word for it. Or _hut_ , if you were more precise. All it is is a clay and synstone hut with two rooms and a common area. You don’t know who built it, or who lived in it before you. But it’s yours, now.

Over a meager dinner ― ahrisa and haroun bread, nearly stale ― you sit in silence. A few words are exchanged, but his voice is soft and in the dim evening, when eye contact is softened and movements dampened, you don’t mind the quiet. You’re tired, and you suspect Ben is, too.

But he is the first to break the silence. “Why are you on Tatooine?”

The question is odd. You tilt your head to the side, unsure if he knows what he’s asking. There’s the easy answer, and then there’s the difficult one. You lean back in your seat, regarding him in the faint, diffused darkness. “Let’s make a deal.”

His eyebrows pull together in curiosity, but he humors you with the slightest of nods.

“I’ll tell you why I’m here if you tell me,” you say. You’ve been wondering for the past few hours, postulating about Luke, about the couple that took him in, about where Ben comes from and why his ship glints bright and clean in the sun.

There’s a beat of silence ― hesitation, you think, but it’s hard to tell ― and then Ben nods again, pulling forward to rest his arms on the surface of the dining table. “Well, then, you first.” Something in his voice sounds almost playful, and though it surprises you, it also seems strangely natural to him, some side of his that has had little chance to show itself.

Again, there’s that sense that Ben is changed, somehow, different from who he really is. You can’t say for sure because you’ve just met him, but on a few instances, you wonder what he’s actually like. Whether he smiles often or his voice has a lilt to it; if he laughs openly or softly; if his eyes can show as much joy as they can grief.

You shut away those thoughts. _You first_ , he said, and you try to decide how much of yourself you’re willing to give away. The silence does not cease, so you speak.

“I don’t come from anywhere in particular,” you say, keenly aware of Ben’s eyes on you. “I ended up on Tatooine out of sheer dumb luck. Ran out of money.”

A beat of silence. “Ran out of money?” Ben repeats softly.

“I was scammed,” you say, and shrug, though it’s a weak shrug, born not of indifference but of wearied regret. There’s nothing you could’ve done, and Tatooine is not known for being kind to newcomers. But the sand and the desert here are tempered by some broken-in mix of resentment and acceptance.

Ben’s voice comes out of the silence again. “Is that why you helped me?”

He poses it as a question, but both of you know he’s right, at least to some degree. Still, to answer would be to cross a boundary. “That’s not part of the deal,” you say, and for some odd reason, the brief tug on the corners of your lips is not wholly unnatural. “It’s your turn.”

“I suppose it is,” Ben says, and you can’t read his tone. He hesitates ― this, you think you’re sure of. “I came to Tatooine to find Luke a home. His parents are dead, and I cannot be his guardian.”

You notice that he does not say why he can’t take care of Luke, so you don’t ask. Instead, you say, “Why stay on Tatooine?”

Ben is silent again, but before you can retract your words, he answers you. “I had a home before the war,” he says, eyes downcast, form still cast in darkness. “During the war, even. But it’s gone now.”

 _Gone?_ you want to ask, but your mind is reminded by your heart that the absence of loved things and places is painful to talk about. And you are reminded by your head that despite everything, Ben is still a stranger, an unknown, and though he sits in your house and eats your food and answers your questions, he is just another traveler torn from his home by the war.

It’s easier to think about when you’re reminded of how wide the galaxy is; when you think about it in terms of numbers and not faces. It’s better that way, isn’t it?

“Tatooine is fitting for the lost,” Ben says. You find his eyes in the dark, and his gaze is soft. His voice is quiet. “It’s fitting for who I am now.”

“And who are you?” you say, even though just a moment ago you were so sure that considering incomprehensible numbers and entire galaxies is preferable to faces and voices.

Still, Ben answers. “An exile,” he says, and though the word is inherently hopeless, he is not entirely grief-stricken. Not entirely. Not yet, perhaps.

 _An exile_ , you repeat to yourself, and you wonder what his home looked like before the war took it away from him. In the music of his voice alone, you decide that his home must have been complete. Or complete enough, for nobody misses what is already lacking.

You don’t ask him any more questions after that. It doesn’t matter that there’s some tentative bond in mutual loneliness, or that you’re both indebted to each other in different ways. You tell yourself that strangers are strangers and must remain that way; that even though Ben says he will stay on Tatooine, no one with a ship stays for long. Not when the rest of the galaxy can offer so much more than here.

The night is deep and long, and conversation is extinguished. You show Ben to the extra room, holding back an apology for the dust because you know all he wants is to rest. The house is still and quiet, and as you switch off the last lantern, true night descends. You close your door and lie in bed and try not to think about the stranger who does not seem like a stranger. The wanderer who does not wander; the exile who cannot be only that. You thought he was a puzzle to be solved; a riddle to be answered. But perhaps, you think, as you drift off, people are more complicated than messages to be decoded or secrets to be found.

//

In the dead of night, you’re woken up. You think it’s because you heard someone cry out. You’re not sure. The house is silent, the air unmoving, and for a few moments, you lie in bed, blinking exhaustion out of your eyes. You’re already on edge because there’s someone unfamiliar in your house, so you try to convince yourself that’s the only reason why you’re awake and unable to fall back asleep.

You still can’t sleep, so you slip out of bed, creaking the door of your room open and then padding past the dining table and finally, to the other closed door on the other side of the house. You stand in front of the door, in the darkness. Part of you is sure that you heard nothing and you should go to sleep instead of disturbing Ben. The other part of you is convinced that you’re just afraid to knock.

In the end, you step away from the door, quietly, and retreat away from the extra room and the stranger that resides within. _Go to sleep_ , you tell yourself, and you’re sure that everything will make sense when the suns rise over the horizon and light fills your house again and darkness does not prompt your mind to invent what cannot exist.

But before you’ve gone a few paces away from the shut door, in the utter silence of night, there is the soft click of a door being cracked open. You turn at the sound. Ben stands in the opening of the door. It’s too dark to make out his face clearly, but what dim light exists reflects off his eyes, which peer at you.

“Did I wake you?” you say quietly, even though you’re certain that it’s the other way around.

Ben is silent for a few moments, and in the padded, inaudible night, you’re unsure of how much time lapses between your voice and his.

“No,” he says, finally. “I couldn’t sleep, anyway.” There’s something behind his voice that you can’t figure out, but you resist the urge to theorize about what kind of sadness has crept into the music of his words.

 _I’m sorry_ , you want to say, because you know that he’s lost a home and a friend, at least. But you merely nod, even though you’re not sure if he can make see much in the gloom. There is nothing more to say ― nothing that would not cross the boundaries of strangers ― so you murmur a _goodnight_ for the second time and cross the distance back to your own room. You do not wake until morning.

And in the morning, he is gone. A few credits are lined up on the dining table, glinting softly in the early light. The blanket in the extra room is folded and set on the bed, the door wide open.

The air is still, the morning silent, and your only companion is the first of the suns as it climbs above the horizon. It’s quiet, and your house feels strangely empty.


	3. Soldier

The desert looks empty to you.

It always does, doesn’t it? This is what Tatooine is: an infinite expanse of rolling sand dotted with a few settlements, and still the sand blows down the streets and dusts the walls of the city, because even though people are capable of constructing civilization, nothing can keep the sand out. It gets in your clothes, too, and under your fingernails, and sometimes it trickles through cracks in your boots and rubs against your feet until they bleed.

The distance is marked by a synstone formation, torn edges rising against the horizon. It gives you momentary pause, because you’ve traveled farther than you expected. It’s still only midday, and you have a long way to walk, but you suppose the monotony of the desert and the sand has blurred the distinctions of time.

At least once you cross the last length of sand, there will be a little more shade. Sweat has soaked the back of your shirt, but you’re more worried that you’ll be too dehydrated to sweat. Your water is running low.

You forge on, even more convinced that humans should have never settled on Tatooine ― humans are not native, and the heat makes that obvious. In the lonesome desert, marked only by rippling air and the relativity of near-identical sand dunes, your thoughts have entered a sort of loop, running over the same simple concepts, considering the same conclusions with every monotonous step.

The feeling of being cold is all you can think about. You’d give anything to be standing in the middle of a blizzard on an ice planet if it meant being away from Tatooine’s heat. You know the cold is just as painful as the fever-warmth of endless desert and two suns, but you can’t remember the feeling of a cool breeze or a chilly room. Snow and ice are far-off mirages that are too vague for you to fully grasp.

Maybe the heat has just addled your brain, you think, and perhaps your lack of alarm is proof enough.

But there’s nothing here except the sand and the formations rising in the distance, and you remind yourself that you’re already ahead of schedule. It helps, but only marginally.

The desert still looks empty by the time you reach the jagged synstone cutting across the sand. It’s not a mountain, you think, but the stone rises from the ground in layers and clefts, and if you wanted to, you could climb to the top and maybe see as far as Bestine.

In the shade of the rock, you let yourself breathe for a moment. The air is still stiff and hot, but at the very least, you’re sheltered from the faces of two suns. You close your eyes, reveling in the shade.

Your rest is broken by the sound of something vaguely animalistic, a grating, dissonant call. You don’t spend a lot of time deciding what it sounds like. You know what it means.

Tusken Raiders. And close, too.

You nearly swear audibly, but catch yourself before you make a sound, even if it’s just under your breath. It’s only misfortune, you know ― you planned this route carefully to minimize risk ― but you can’t help but wonder if it was foolish for you to venture out alone.

Not that it matters. You’ve always been on your own. You’ll wait until the Tusken Raiders leave and then continue on your way. That’s all.

There’s another call, and this one is much, much closer. You press yourself against the side of the rock, hoping the shadows will cloak you, even if the indent in the rock is shallow and shadows will do nothing at midday if the Tuskens are close enough.

There’s something like the scuffing of boots against rock, and you picture a Tusken Raider, cloaked and masked, walking on the ridge of the synstone formation above you. You try to even out your heartbeat, but the air is hot and stifling, and your heart races faster when its oxygen is laden with heavy, thick heat and dust. Your hands are shaking, but you regain enough of yourself to fumble for the blaster at your hip, click off the safety, and fit your hand around the grip, finger resting against the trigger.

Something drops in front of you. It blurs. In the split-second that the image settles, you catch sight of a mask, holes carved for the eyes and mouth in some crude imitation of a face. Fear seizes your heart and you squeeze the trigger.

The figure, in all of its layers of torn linen and tawny clothing, collapses to the ground at your feet, and the face of the raider’s mask is burned into your mind. You stare at the fallen Tusken Raider. There’s some kind of relief, some background awareness that you evaded death, but you’re too wound up to recognize it.

In the haze of your shock and adrenaline, you nearly miss the echoing calls of other Tuskens and the masked forms that come out of nowhere with clubs and cries.

You don’t have time to even think before the rounded end of a club is knocking your blaster out of your hand and then knocking into your stomach. Pain flares from your core, and you stumble backward, hitting a wall of rock. It happens so quickly that you grasp for your blaster when it’s already on the ground, and it takes you a moment to understand when your hand closes around air.

The world is a mess of things you don’t want to remember: featureless faces, a cacophony of noise, hot air burning your throat, flashes of black as your vision winks in and out. Another blow comes, and you grapple for purchase against the wall, reaching out to either side of yourself. As you collapse against the rock, your hand slides on a jagged edge and there’s a sharp sting in your palm and your fingers. It’s different than blunt force battering against your ribs ― it brings a brilliant, excruciating clarity, and for a moment, your mind clears enough to understand that this is it.

No one who falls into the hands of the Tusken Raiders makes it out alive.

In your pain-addled, reality-forgotten state, you’re barely able to understand that you’re not just facing death, but a painful one. It rips another bout of panic from you, but you can’t imagine pain worse than this: the aching in your side, the pounding in your head, the constant throbbing in your hand. There’s something warm and thick slowly dripping down the side of your face, and you want to wipe it away but can’t get your body to respond.

Your vision is scrambled and disordered, like the rest of you. You think you understand pain, now. You think you might understand death, soon. Beyond that, your thoughts are incoherent and intangible.

This is what’s left.

For some reason, the blows stop. Your pain smarts. You think you’re about to pass out. Perhaps they will take you to one of their camps, you think, but you hope you die before you get there. You just want the pain to go away.

Beneath a churning sea of futile wishes and endless hurt, you think you hear some sort of vibrating hum, and perhaps you see a kind of burning lightning, cutting through the air in an arc, bright even compared to Tatooine at midday.

But you’re not sure ― you’re slipping away, and you just want to rest. You let yourself slide into the darkness. For a moment, you’re reminded of what it feels like to be cold and what it feels like to be enveloped in water.

You haven’t forgotten what cold feels like. Not entirely. But Tatooine has taken part of it from you.

Inexplicably, though, you’re reminded of what it feels like to be warm before you pass out. You remember a low voice, soft touches, and some kind of comfort in the midst of hardship.

//

You fall in and out of consciousness in lapses ― there’s darkness, and then the pale blue of sky overhead, and then darkness again as you close your eyes and drift away. You’re vaguely aware that someone or something is carrying you across the desert, but you’re too weak to care about whether they’re friend or foe.

“You’re alright,” a voice says, entering the haze of memory and confusion, and you turn to see a pair of blue eyes. They’re oddly familiar and yet not, but you can’t help but feel like you’ve met this person before. Seen these eyes.

You’re too tired to decide.

//

Everything from the moment you drew your blaster and shot the first Tusken Raider is a mess. You don’t know how many others there were, where they hit you, or if you’re going to be okay. Time is an expanding and contracting concept, wavering and blurred by emotion and perception.

Reality, too, is strange and altered, counted in single frames instead of continuous events. You know you were carried through the desert. You know you were taken inside. You remember someone wrapping your palm and saying something.

When you awaken for the first real time, light filters through your eyelids and makes your vision glow red and orange. You’re warm, but not hot, and the air is still. It’s silent. The world around you is padded and soft, and you wonder, for a fleeting moment, if the Tusken Raiders were just a dream.

A bolt of pain shivers down your side, and you decide it wasn’t a dream. Woken by the pain, you open your eyes, adjusting to the sudden glare.

“You’re awake,” someone says, and it takes a moment for you to grasp the voice before you match it to the stranger you helped a while ago ― Ben, he was called. He’s helping you sit up, handing you a mug of something and urging you to drink.

It’s just water, warmed by the incessant heat, but you drain the mug, suddenly aware of how dehydrated you are. Your vision has adjusted to the influx of light, and you pass a cursory glance around the room ― synstone walls, bare furnishings, a blanket wrapped around you in an alcove.

“You’re dehydrated,” Ben says, and you’re reminded that he’s here.

“You helped me?” you say, and your voice is scratchy and thin. It sounds almost foreign to your ears, except it’s still your voice. Just warped.

He meets your eyes and nods. “I was going to Bestine. Heard a group of Tuskens.”

“And you went toward the sound?” you say, unsure whether that makes him brave or foolish.

Ben shrugs. You wonder if there’s something else about him that he hasn’t told you ― if he’s a bounty hunter or an assassin, and that’s why he’s not afraid of Tusken Raiders when everyone is.

“Who…” You struggle to find the words. Is it rude to ask? “Who are you to fight a group of Tusken Raiders?”

Ben goes still, and his eyes search your face for a long moment, as if trying to discern if you’re hiding something. But it’s him who’s the riddle that has yet to be answered, and he sighs softly to himself, dropping his hands to his sides. “I was a soldier in the war,” he says.

It begins to make sense how he lost his friend. They must have been in the last pushes of the war; Mandalore or Coruscant, you think. Most of soldiers on both sides were either droids or clones ― other than Jedi ― but there must have been a regiment of volunteers or something.

It’s quiet between the two of you, but the next question comes on the tailend of the first. “Why would you help me?” you say.

Ben searches your eyes again. “You helped me before.”

Something tells you that he would have helped anyone in the same situation, but you don’t say it aloud, out of some selfish desire to keep this designation to yourself. Still, his logic is strange and almost foolish. You don’t risk your life to help someone else, even if you owe them a debt. No one does.

“You don’t owe me,” you say, fingers curling into the cushion of the mattress beneath you. The bed in the alcove is threadbare, but you haven’t noticed until now. You shake your head softly, looking away from Ben. “If anything, I owe you. You saved my life.”

“You were kind to me,” Ben says, but despite the gentleness in his voice, you don’t look at him. “I have learned that kindness is rare in places like this.”

Kindness is rare because places like this do not offer mercy. There is the endless heat, and the spice smugglers, and the Tusken Raiders, and as if the planet was not stripped dry already, there are the Hutts and their water tax and the tax collectors. You’ve seen planets covered in water before and wonder how people on Tatooine can thirst to death while planets in the neighboring sector drown their inhabitants in an overwhelming excess of water.

It’s more complicated than that. But it’s not as complicated as others make it seem.

And to Ben, who stands there without any sense of foolishness after he saved your life without expecting anything in return, the matter of kindness is simple. Not as complicated as others make it seem.

“Thank you,” you finally say, unsure of what else there is. Your eyes catch on his, and he blinks once, head tilting slightly as if to ask what you need to be thankful for.

“It was the right thing to do,” he says softly.

You’re reminded that he is a soldier. _Was_ a soldier, you mean, but that’s not the point. It’s about duty, you suppose, or honor, but the exact word doesn’t matter so much as the idea that he is bound to something greater than himself; that he feels obligation to something other than a Hutt or a client. Kindness is rare, but so is integrity. You gave him a single kindness. He acted on the sum of his being.

“Ben,” you say, and his brow furrows. You watch him for a moment, uncertain of yourself. “Thank you.”

For a moment, you think he’s about to say that you don’t need to be thankful. But he doesn’t say anything. He’s silent, and you watch him, wondering what he’s thinking about and why he seems conflicted.

His eyes refocus on your face as he returns from whatever thoughts he was lost in. He does not accept your gratitude. “I need to look at your wounds,” he says, but at the same time, you suppose he has not rejected your words, either.

You stop considering why Ben does not want credit for saving your life. It sets him apart from the rest of Tatooine and the people you have come to expect. But you push your heavier thoughts out of the way and hold out your bandaged hand when Ben motions for it.

He cradles your hand in between his with a tenderness you’re unaccustomed to. Slowly, the bandages are unwinded, and you look at the slice that runs from one end of your palm to the other in a deep red line. The edges are already scabbing, but the flesh is tender, and it begins to sting. You hold your hand still, afraid that moving your fingers will aggravate the cut.

Ben studies your palm for a moment and then reaches behind himself to retrieve another roll of linen. He seems undisturbed, and your cheeks warm a little at the thought that the injuries you suffered must be far less than what he is used to.

He notices, pausing for a moment, still poised with a strip of bandage in one hand. “It will scar,” he says evenly, bringing one end of the strip to rest against your palm. “But only this injury. The one on your forehead will fade with time.”

You don’t remember injuring your forehead, but you carefully bring your other hand up to your head, skimming over your hairline until you hit a patch of soreness that smarts to touch and sends your vision into wingbeats of black and white when you prod the skin.

“Where else am I injured?” you say.

Ben pauses for a single moment, eyes flicking up to yours. He searches your eyes for a moment, pupils moving in a sea of blue. “I think your ribs are bruised, if not cracked,” he says. “There’s a scratch on your cheek. But you took a lot of blunt force. Lots of bruising.”

You nod. It’s about what you expected. If anything, you were lucky to escape the Tusken Raiders with nothing worse than a few cuts and lots of bruising. They left before they could inflict permanent damage. And something about that bothers you ―

“How did you fight the Tusken Raiders?”

“I didn’t fight them,” Ben says, as he finishes wrapping your palm and lowers your hand back to the bed. “They ran away.”

In the vague recesses of memory, you recall the flicker of blue lightning and a heavy, long hum, but it’s disjointed and strange, perhaps a figment of your imagination. “How did you…”

Ben stops in reaching for another set of bandages, hands hovering midair, and for a moment he stands like that ― frozen, the only frame of a paused feed. He turns to look at you, and whereas before he searched your eyes for answers, this time he is tearing apart what he can to find something. A few seconds elapse.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says quietly, and tells you to close your eyes while he works on the scratch on your cheek. You close your eyes.

Part of you would rather have the scratch scar. You have lived in a sea of sand and heat, every klick the same, every city molded from the same bricks, and you have known Tatooine to be devoid of kindness. It has been that way for a long time, and it is only Ben and the Tusken Raiders he saved you from who have etched something on the blank expanse of your soul.

You’d rather it not fade, whatever this is ― this feeling, this reassurance, this fascination. This reminder that you are alive and breathing. Your scars will fade, Ben had said, but you hope he does not think of himself as another scar carved into the surface of something tragic. Scar tissue, after all, is still skin.


	4. Survivor

He treats your wounds, but you don’t want them to heal.

Before, you were drawn to him as a concept ― an outsider, a newcomer, the idea of something other than sand and spice smugglers and raiders. To you, Ben’s arrival meant something to break the monotony of the desert, a traveler who had not been on Tatooine long enough to grow as ruthless as the rest of the planet. He was a concept you were chasing after.

But now, you can’t pretend it’s just that. It’s him you’re drawn to, not what he stands for. Him.

You don’t want to admit it, but as one day drags into two and two into three ― as your wounds begin to heal ― you don’t want to leave. It’s not that his house is nice; it’s just another synstone hut, falling apart at the corners, dustier than yours. It’s not that you’re afraid of the raiders. It’s Ben that you don’t want to leave.

You sit at his table and take the food he offers you, even if it isn’t much. You don’t mind. You watch him across from you as you take a bite of the meal ― dustcrepe and nausage ― and in the waning light spilling through the windows of the hut, the edge of Ben’s silhouette is lined in amber. He looks up to find you watching him.

“Is everything alright?” he says, brow furrowing as his eyes meet yours.

“Everything’s alright,” you say quietly. “Thank you.”

Ben pauses for a moment, head tilting in the slightest, as if trying to discern your thoughts. “You don’t have to thank me.”

He’s said so multiple times, but it doesn’t change how he replaces the bandage on your hand every day and gives you the only bed in his house. How can you not thank him when it’s his food and his bandages and his help that enables your body to piece itself back together?

“You’re on the way to recovery,” Ben says, and your attention snaps back to the present.

Again, your thoughts rebel against the notion of lacing your boots back on and setting out over the desert, back to your own house, back to your own silence and your own desert. But you remind yourself that you’re just a guest, and you have been imposing on Ben’s kindness for more than a few days.

“I’ll be on my way soon,” you say, all while failing to convince yourself that it’ll be better alone. “As soon as I can make the journey.”

Ben looks as if he is about to say something more, but he stops himself, eyes unreadable as he nods. “When you are able to.”

 _When you are able to_. When the cracks in your ribs begin to fuse, when the cut in your hand begins to close, when the bruises that litter your arms and your stomach begin to fade. They are ugly marks dealt to you by the Tusken Raiders, but they are what has bound you to Ben and kept you here. You do not want them to heal if it means you can stay for longer.

But that’s not how Tatooine works, you remind yourself. Ben will leave once he understands this. There is no kindness here. No warmth; just burning, blistering heat.

After every supper, he takes your dishes back to the kitchen, refuses your help, and returns with bandages. He apologizes for not having bacta, and you wonder where he came from if bacta is considered a necessity and not a luxury. But you don’t ask. If his home was abundant enough to have bacta, he must miss it dearly in comparison to the dusty, bleak landscape of Tatooine.

You set your hand on the table, palm up, for it has become a routine. Ben slowly unwinds the bandage from around your palm, fingertips barely grazing your skin. When the old bandage is gone, you pause to look at the red line carved from the base of your index finger and through the flesh of your palm, stopping before your wrist. It stings, uncovered, but you hold your fingers still. The cut hasn’t completely scabbed over, but it’s slowly healing.

“Good,” Ben says softly. “Not infected.”

The air is still between the two of you, the house silent, and as he works to wrap your hand again, there is nothing to think about but the faint warmth of his fingertips as they skim over your palm. You think his hands are callused but you can’t tell if it’s just friction.

Ben is careful, each move deliberate and measured, and he always bandages your hand slowly, as if he is afraid to cause you pain or tear open the wound. You’re not sure how a soldier can be so gentle or how rough hands can have such a delicate touch, but his do. He has shown you all kinds of impossibilities: oceans in deserts, kindness in mourning, peace in silence.

His hands leave yours, and he is done with the cut on your palm. You pull your hand back toward yourself, examining the bandage for a moment, carefully flexing your fingers. You’re about to say something about the cut feeling better, so you turn to Ben.

But the words die as his eyes pin you there, and your brow furrows as your thoughts turn to why he looks at you with something tantamount to perhaps concern or frustration.

You open your mouth again to push away the silence, but the words die in your throat as Ben reaches over with one hand to brush against your cheek. It’s just the pad of his thumb, tracing along the edge of the scratch on your cheek, but his touch is gentle and unexpected, and you forget what you were about to say. His touch is gone all too soon, but the traces of it linger, as if there is a second scratch carved into the skin of your cheek. You don’t want it to heal, either.

“I was wrong,” Ben says softly. His hand drops back to his side. “Maybe the cut on your cheek will scar, too.” There’s a pause. “I’m sorry.”

He shouldn’t apologize. But you can’t find the words to say so, not when you know it will shatter the tentative vulnerability that extends between you and him.

“It’s not your fault,” you settle on. “I don’t mind.”

And you don’t. Really. No one on Tatooine would care about a scar on your face. And Ben, you think, carries scars of his own, both old and new, and you think you are beginning to understand how they interfere with the skin of his soul, even if he hides them.

Ben holds your gaze for a moment longer, and his eyes are forever deep in the falling twilight. There’s something else in his eyes that make you pause, but you can’t figure out what it is. You have yet to figure out who he is, after all, or the answer to his riddle.

You don’t want to leave, not when you haven’t yet figured out how the pieces he has given you fit together. You’re certain that once you piece the puzzle together, it will be quite beautiful.

//

Night comes all too soon, and the lights in the hut are dimmed. It’s quieter, even though there’s hardly any sound during the day. It’s silent as you ease yourself onto the thin mattress of the house’s only bed. Ben is in another room, washing up, perhaps, or taking inventory. You don’t know where he sleeps, and you’re beginning to wonder if he sleeps at all. But you never comment on it.

In the darkness, you find sleep easily. You dream of worlds that have come and gone long ago: planets of ice, and cities with skyscrapers, and oceans ― you’re always thinking about oceans. You’ve cursed your misfortune to be stranded on a planet of deserts and hot suns. You don’t think you could get sick of oceans, not even if you were stranded on a planet covered entirely in water.

And then your dream turns, almost inevitably, to the raiders.

In your distorted memories, their masks are bleeding from the sockets, their clubs pointed instead of smooth. They never attack you in your dreams. They only heft their clubs and scream death because it’s not the pain that you remember vividly, but the fear. That’s what you have immortalized for yourself ― a kind of fear that holds you like a vice and does not let go, a kind of fear that slows the pace of time and squeezes your stomach until you see black.

You remember that.

The universe is cruel for keeping you conscious for the length of your fear and then yanking you away from the waking world once you were safe and rescued. But you dream of what you remember, and though it is distorted, your fear is not. It is a snaking, suffocating thing that closes your vision and expands and contracts your lungs painfully fast. Fear is supposed to keep you alive, but now you think you’re about to die, and it extends, wrapping you whole, pulling you into some darkness that screams ―

No, it does not scream.

The voice is not quiet, but it is not frantic. It says your name, and you think you’ve heard this melody before. The darkness dissolves, slowly and then rapidly, and in the fog of retreating sleep, you’re aware that you’re awake and it is still night.

Someone is saying your name, and you latch onto whatever certainties you can find. The dream begins to fade, and reality clicks back into place. _Ben_. He’s saying your name. He says it again, and this time, his voice is more gentle.

“Ben?” It’s dark, and you cannot see more than a vague silhouette hovering over you. He’s touching your shoulder, you realize, and you think that maybe he was shaking you to wake up.

“It’s just me,” he says.

When the world is blanketed in night, his voice is the only thing to latch onto. You still haven’t asked him if his accent is Coruscanti. Part of you doesn’t want to know ― to know where his voice comes from would be to contain him to some part of the galaxy when you so desperately want him to be more than what it can offer. To label the music of his voice would be to attempt to define something which is better left alone, better left a mystery.

His hand is still on your shoulder, warm, and though the back of your shirt clings to your skin with sweat and hair is matted to your forehead, his warmth is welcome. You don’t understand how you can still distinguish between levels of warmth when you have lived under the Tatooine sun for so long, but with Ben, you can.

“It was a nightmare,” he says. “It’s alright now.”

His touch leaves your shoulder and a lantern clicks on, and he settles the light source at the foot of the bed. It illuminates the planes of his face in soft golden light.

You’re not sure how to respond. If it was anyone else, you’d thank them for waking you up and then try to fall back asleep. But Ben will reject your gratitude. He has saved your life and still does not accept anything from you.

“I get them too,” Ben says, after a moment of silence. He seems to understand that you don’t want to go back to sleep, not yet. “Nightmares, I mean.”

You know that already, but you don’t mention the night he stayed in your house or the exhaustion that hangs over him every day. There are things both of you notice but never mention.

“I haven’t had a nightmare like this in awhile,” you say, and you prop yourself up on your elbows to sit up, kicking off the blankets because it’s hot. “Not even immediately after the raiders.”

Ben studies you for a moment in the soft light. “You’re afraid,” he says, after a moment. “It’s fear.”

It always is, isn’t it? But the word _fear_ means something else to Ben by the way he says it carefully. You can’t discern what it is to him from his face alone.

“How do you know it’s fear?” you say.

He blinks at you once, mouth pressed into a firm line, and then he lets his gaze fall, not meeting yours. “I had a friend who dealt with nightmares,” he said quietly. “He was afraid of losing the woman he loved.”

You can’t help but ask. “Did he?”

“Did he what?” Ben says.

You pause for a moment, unsure of venturing into Ben’s past. You know there’s pain somewhere in the folds of why he came to Tatooine. He still does not meet your eyes, so you forge on, though your voice drops in volume, as if you’re afraid to hear the answer. “Did he lose her?”

Ben looks up at you then, blue eyes still blue in the warm light, and where his gaze was soft, it is now piercing. He searches your face, and not out of concern, but out of some strange defensive mechanism. You wonder if you can take back your words, take back the hurt that you have just caused him, pretend you’re not afraid of losing what you have come to love.

Slowly, his eyes dim again. “Yes,” Ben says. His voice is soft, the music dampened. “He lost everything.”

The words offer no comfort to you, but you asked for the truth. He has given you a piece of his nebulous past, and you hold onto it. Perhaps you’ve caused him pain by asking. Or perhaps he has offered to endure it, since it was him who brought up his past in the first place.

“I’m sorry,” you offer, but the words are hollow, even to you.

He watches you with a furrow in his brow. For a moment, he leans forward, and he’s on the verge of saying something, and then he stops himself and pulls back again, looking down at the lantern.

“Do you want it on?” he says. “You should go back to sleep.”

You recognize it as a dismissal ― he has ended the conversation, if it could be called one ― and you should play your part, too: tell him that it’s alright, that he can turn off the light, that you’ll go back to sleep. Pretend nothing happened in the morning.

But you’re tired of these stolen glances and nearly spoken words and decisions that always seem to end in silence and disappointment.

“You’re afraid, too,” you say, instead.

Ben hesitates for a moment, eyes trained on the floor before rising to meet yours. “No,” he says softly. “I have no fear. Only regret.”

You could ask him what he regrets, but you know that regret is inherently riddled with hurt, and you will not ask until he offers. “Who are you, if you have no fear?”

He pauses, eyes still trained on yours, and then he says, slowly, “A survivor.”

He has picked a new word every time you ask him who he is, but they aren’t so different. He has defined himself, again and again, by the separation between what was and what is. You want to ask him who he was before he came to Tatooine, or even before the war, but you don’t know if he will tell you. A soldier, he said once, and you suppose that is the most accurate name he has given himself, even if it seems like he fights more of a war now than before.

“Do you want the light on?” he says quietly.

You are silent for a moment. Is this how everything is supposed to end? You thought it was better to be alone ― to keep your house empty and your heart closed ― but if you don’t want to be alone, is it really better?

“Wait,” you say, when Ben turns to retreat. He pauses, looking back, questioning. Your heart hammers in your chest, and it’s fear, but a different kind than you’re used to. “Don’t leave.” _Not yet_ , you’d add, but you don’t want him to leave at all.

His lips part, as if he’s about to say something more. He decides against it once, and then, after an agonizing moment, speaks. “You want me to stay?”

You pull your knees to your chest, suddenly vulnerable in the light of Ben’s gaze. It feels like he finally sees you, and not just his friend who lost everything or a victim of the Tusken Raiders. You know that’s not entirely true ― he hasn’t replaced your worth with something else ― but something changes when he asks if you want him to stay.

“Yes,” you say, simply. “Stay.”

You could explain; tell him that you can’t sleep and you don’t want to be alone and you enjoy his company, but you don’t think you need to explain. He knows you are afraid. He sees past your words.

Slowly, perhaps because he wants to preserve the quiet, Ben crosses the distance between you and him, perching on the edge of the mattress past your feet. He pulls his own knees up, crosses his legs, and lets out a breath.

“Are you alright?” he says quietly, leaning against the wall of the alcove to look at you.

You nod. “I will be.” You’d ask in return, but you know what the answer is already.

It’s silent, even while Ben sits against the far end of the bed and you curl your chest into your knees on the other side. He seems to know that you don’t want to be alone but you don’t need to talk. You just need the knowledge that someone ― Ben ― is there.

Eventually, you fall asleep again, and this time, your dreams are empty. When morning comes, you find that Ben is still leaning against the wall, legs still folded in front of him. His eyes are closed, though, and his breathing steady. It’s the first time you know of that he’s slept.


	5. Knight

You find the journals when he is gone.

To be fair, it isn’t entirely your fault. He doesn’t let you go with him when he collects black melons or goes into town. You’re still wounded ― your side is covered in blotches of purple and brown bruises and the cuts on your hand and cheek have yet to close up. You’re bored, and he’s gone, and the leather-bound journals are sitting on the dining table. It isn’t entirely your fault.

Maybe you’re being intrusive by looking at his journals, but that’s not the point.

The point is the journals are confusing in all the wrong ways. Some of the accounts are of battles and operations from the Clone Wars ― that, you can understand, to a certain degree ― but other entries detail odd practices from a strange culture. He writes about meditation. About clans, and something called the Gathering.

You know the galaxy contains millions upon millions of unique societies and cultures, but it’s like nothing you’ve encountered. And you know what you have encountered is an infinitely small fraction compared to the expanse of star systems and planets, but there is something different about this place that Ben once called home. He writes about a cold cave with glowing crystals. He writes about a room filled with plants from all over the galaxy and fountains that flow in silvery streams. He never names them, but you’re sure some part of him still lives there.

You’re sitting at his dining table, poring over his journals, when the door to the hut creaks and a moment later, there is the light scuff of boots on the floor. You recognize Ben from his footsteps alone. There’s no time to hide from him, and just as he enters the room, you stand and pull away from the table, as if the open journal on the surface of the table isn’t proof enough that you’ve been snooping.

A sack of something heavy hangs from one of his hands, and you think they might be black melons. But you only have a moment to take in his appearance before you meet his eyes. He glances from you to the table with the open journal.

For a long moment, it’s silent, and he does not react. But you still feel like a child about to be scolded, and though his eyes are the only thing moving, you shrink under his gaze.

“Ben,” you start, just as he says your name. You falter. The silence stretches.

Ben holds your gaze for a moment longer. He drops the sack by his feet, crosses the distance between the two of you to the journal on the table, and picks it up, skimming over the page. His gaze softens, and it’s barely noticeable. You only detect it because you have learned to listen to his language of nearly imperceptible kindnesses.

Still, you’re afraid. It’s more of a testament to who you are than who Ben is ― he has never shown you anything to fear, not in him.

“I wanted to tell you everything,” Ben says, and though his voice is quiet, it startles you. He sets the journal back down, but he does not close the cover. “I want to tell you everything.”

 _What do you mean?_ you want to ask, but you also don’t want to break this strange sliver of himself that he shows you. Again, you’re afraid ― afraid it will be your voice yanking on the tether that ties you together until it unravels. Afraid it will be you who ends this delicate, temporary eternity that emerges when his voice is soft and his eyes deep.

“But I can’t,” he says, and it is he who breaks eye contact. “I’m sorry.”

Something inside of you seizes as he apologizes, again, for things he is not responsible for. “Ben,” you say, glancing at the journal on the table. “I’m sorry for prying. I shouldn’t have.” You gesture halfheartedly to the journal. “It wasn’t my place.”

Ben follows your gaze to the journal and then flits back to you. He shakes his head. “No, you mustn’t apologize.”

How can you not? Ben has done nothing but sacrifice to help you. You have done nothing to repay him except indulging in records of his past that have not been granted to you. He has given you his food, and his home, and his care. But his memories do not belong to you.

“I’m in the wrong,” you say, and you resist the urge to reach out. “Not you.”

Ben stares at you for a few seconds longer, but he drops his gaze again. “There are parts of my past,” he says, slowly, as if he is choosing his words carefully, “that I cannot tell you. Not because I don’t trust you. But for your safety.”

Again, your mind struggles to draw up a list of potential reasons for why Ben is on Tatooine. Perhaps there is a bounty on his head, or perhaps he is an escaped slave, or perhaps a defector. You don’t know, so you try to forget all the possibilities that float through your head. Who he was isn’t relevant, not to where you are right now and who he is to you.

You’ve been obsessed with decoding him ― finding the pieces of the puzzle, as if there is a question and an answer and the answer is not an entire human being. And perhaps you’ve been so obsessed with decoding him that you have overlooked something important.

He says he trusts you.

You don’t know when he became more than a stranger, or an acquaintance, or an ally. You don’t know when he became more than just a traveler to you. But it feels right ― you know it’s right ― and your reply is just as true.

The words are foreign and unexpected, and though they’re quiet, they don’t stick in your throat because they are true. “I trust you, too.”

Ben holds your gaze, brow furrowed, and you’re reminded that his eyes are blue. It’s not that his eyes are abnormal. It’s not like you haven’t seen blue eyes before. But here, in this land of dry dust and deserts, his eyes are like an oasis. They cannot be taken away or taxed by the Hutts, and they belong to someone who has already given you so much.

“What is it?” he says.

You pause, unsure what to say. He’s about to say something else ― maybe he’s about to take back his words out of uncertainty, so you speak before he can.

“Why do you never let me apologize?”

There is silence again ― you have gotten used to it. But he never leaves you without an answer. “You apologize out of compassion,” Ben says. “It reminds me there is kindness left in this world.”

To you, it’s Ben who has shown you compassion, who has reminded you that there is some kindness left in the corners of this universe. You don’t know how it can be the other way around; how he can think you have given him something of worth. Yet he says it like it’s real to him; like you have given him as much as he has given you.

Something about that makes your heart clench. You barely blink away the first welling of tears in your eyes, and maybe Ben notices, because he urges you, silently, to meet his gaze.

“Hey,” Ben says. He offers the barest of smiles, but it still reaches his eyes. “I was going to visit Luke today. Do you want to join me?”

You do.

//

It’s late by the time you reach the homestead, later than when you first took Ben here. The two suns have sunken below the horizon and light is leeched from the sky in the twilight. It’s not pitch dark, but everything is painted in varying intensities of blurring black and gray.

You walked here, and you try not to think about how that means you should be able to make the journey back home. You said you’d leave once you’re able to, and you don’t want to impose on Ben’s hospitality. But you’re no longer sure where home is.

You push the thought out of your head and offer a smile to Ben, beside you, even if he won’t be able to see it. In the darkness, the moisture farm is marked solely by the hut ― you know from memory that it’s a domed clay structure, but now, it’s just a blot of ink against a dark page.

The door is set in a deep threshold, a step into the ground, and it’s cool under the shade of the doorway. Ben raps twice and a few moments later, the door cracks open. Diffused amber light floods the entry, and there’s a man holding the door open. His clothing is plain, and it fits his profession as a moisture farmer.

“It’s good to see you, Owen,” Ben says. “I’m here to see Luke, as we agreed.”

Owen peers at Ben first, nodding, and then turns toward you. “Who…”

“A friend,” Ben says.

Owen looks on. “I thought you weren’t allowed to―”

“She’s a friend,” Ben repeats, and Owen falls silent again.

“Luke is doing fine,” Owen says, though this time he speaks slower. “It’s late.”

“I apologize,” Ben says, and his voice is still diplomatic, even if it’s clear that Owen doesn’t want visitors. “I’m just here for Luke. Then I’ll be on my way.”

There’s silence. You’re not sure why Owen is hostile. Perhaps it’s because he feels like Luke is a part of his family now, and not Ben’s. Perhaps Ben is involved in something dangerous, and Owen is afraid to get tangled in whatever it is. _Stop speculating_ , you tell yourself. It doesn’t help.

“Look,” Owen says. “I appreciate your worry. But it will be better for him if you stay away.” His voice is still hushed, even if there’s no one else for several klicks except for his wife and Luke.

You can’t tell exactly what Ben’s face looks like ― whether his brow is furrowed or his eyes are still trained on Owen ― but you can almost feel his hurt. Maybe you’re just imagining it; you can’t see him, after all. But even if you’re just imagining it, you know Ben feels things like hurt, even if he hides it well.

“Who’s at the door?” comes another voice ― a woman ― and she looks over Owen’s shoulder. Ben called her Beru, you think. She’s holding something in her arms.

“It’s nothing,” Owen says softly, turning to face his wife. “Just Ben Kenobi. Go back to sleep.”

She nods, turning away, but not before you catch sight of the bundle she’s holding. It’s an infant, wrapped in cloth, and she hugs it to her chest as she disappears. Luke. Beside you, Ben shifts. He sees Luke, too. 

Owen watches as Beru disappears again and then turns back to you and Ben, filling the doorframe. “It’s late,” he repeats.

It is. It’s not completely dark ― the stars overhead glow against the curtain of night ― but darkness has nearly reached its zenith. Soon, everything will be shrouded in black, cut out of obsidian, clumps of ash on a dark canvas. But you also know how much Ben cares about Luke. Perhaps you don’t know why, exactly, he has made Tatooine his home or why he stays when Luke is not even his, but this, you’re sure of: he cares about Luke.

You know it’s not your place to speak, but you can’t help it. Not when Owen wraps his fingers around the edge of the door as if preparing to shut it.

“We came all this way,” you say. “Ben just wants to see Luke.” You’re aware of Ben turning to look at you, eyes reflecting the warm light spilling from behind the door, but you won’t take back your words.

“What do you know?” Owen says. Strangely, it’s not condescending when he says it. It sounds like an honest question, and you’re not sure how to respond. He shakes his head. “If you understood, you wouldn’t be here.”

You don’t want to think about it, but already your mind jumps to a list of new possibilities: maybe Ben is a fugitive, or a high-profile Separatist, or a politician with a bounty on his head. None of them seem right, even if Tatooine has taught you that no one is as kind as they seem. He’s different from what you have known on Tatooine and what you have known before. He doesn’t fit in this puzzle, even though you have been trying to make him a piece in an elaborate jigsaw.

No, you don’t really know all of who he is. But what he has shown you is enough.

“I trust him,” you say, and even though Owen scoffs, your words hang in the air between you and him and Ben. Ben looks at you, but you can’t tell what he’s thinking.

It doesn’t matter, anyway, because after another moment, the door is closed. You’re plunged into darkness again, and you stare at the door for a moment before Ben says your name, soft and low, and then you remember to pick your feet up and step out of the entry and onto the ground outside the homestead. Here, where the landscape is flat and forever, the night is free, and inky darkness floats around you.

“It’s alright,” Ben says quietly, as he begins to lead you away from the farm. It should be you saying that to him. But it’s not, and it’s his voice that coaxes you forward.

You walk in silence beside him, wondering why it feels like defeat when there was no battle and nothing to win in the first place. Perhaps what hurts the most is that Ben must be hurting now, more than you can know, and yet you don’t know what to say.

“In the morning,” Ben says, voice low, “you should leave.”

You don’t know what to say to this, either.

“Owen is right,” he continues. “It’s dangerous for you to associate with me. I’ll bring an eopie for you to ride to your house. Or you can take my ship and go somewhere much better than here. Somewhere without a water shortage. Somewhere you won’t get scammed.”

What are you supposed to say? How can you tell him you don’t want to leave, even if it means putting your life in danger? How do you explain you’re almost glad for the Tusken Raiders who attacked you because it brought him into your life again? Perhaps if you were better with words, you could find something to quantify what you mean. But words are fickle and fail you often.

There is only silence. When it drags on, reality narrows to an all-encompassing darkness, the sand shifting under your feet, and the figure beside you who has only become more of a mystery.

“Ben,” you finally manage, and you can only tell that he looks at you because his head turns sharply. “I don’t want your ship. Or an eopie. And I don’t need to go somewhere better than here.”

He stops walking and turns to face you.

“You were scammed,” he says quietly, as if you need to be reminded of the things you told him about yourself. “You’re not here willingly. You’re stranded. You deserve a place where you don’t need to hide.”

You wonder how he does not already know you’ve found a place. How can he not see that it’s with him that you finally understand compassion?

“You don’t understand,” Ben says. You wish you could see his eyes, but it’s too dark, and he is just a shadow before you. “If you trust me, you should leave. Go somewhere else. Forget about me.”

“I don’t want to,” you say. Your voice is weak in the wind that rolls over the desert at night. But you know he will hear you. With Ben, you’ve never needed to raise your voice to be heard. He hears because he listens.

“There are people who want me dead,” he replies, and his tone is laced with something urgent. “I’m here to hide.”

You can’t help it. You’ve asked more than once or twice, and more than once or twice, he has given you an answer. And yet they have been incomplete, and though you trust him, you can’t help it as the words tumble out of your mouth. “Then who’s trying to kill you?” you say. “And truthfully, Ben, who are you?”

“Who am I?” he repeats. In the dark, when there is nothing visual to grasp onto but a strange blend of near contrasts, his voice is the only thing that’s sure.

“Do you trust me?” you ask, and for once, your voice isn’t on the border of inaudible, because for once, you’re not afraid of his answer.

He’s quiet for a while. You aren’t sure how much time elapses ― night renders the lightless desert nebulous and strange ― but his voice breaks the silence. “You read my journals,” he says. “I told you I fought in the war, and I’m an exile from my homeland. That’s true.” He pauses. “But why I fought in the war and where my home is…”

You wait.

“I come from Coruscant,” Ben says. His face is covered in shadow, so you draw nearer and peer at his eyes, which reflect what little light comes from the stars above. Slowly, he says, “I was a Jedi.”

A Jedi? Your mind scrambles. What you know of Jedi consists of glowing swords and nearly mystic powers. You’ve heard stories of mind manipulation and abilities that defy physics. Half of the galaxy is convinced the Jedi Order is just a legend. You know they fought in the war. You think you recall seeing something about treason and Jedi and bounties, but you can’t remember.

Ben, you think immediately, cannot be a Jedi. What kind of Jedi would come to Tatooine to hide? What kind of Jedi would live in a dusty hut in the middle of the Jundland Wastes? Or heal the wounds of someone who is insignificant in the shadow of the galaxy? He’s too real to be a Jedi knight ― a warrior arrayed in light and chosen by the universe, a protector who is concerned with the universe, not a single girl who shows him kindness out of curiosity.

“You’re a Jedi knight?” you repeat.

His voice comes from the darkness in a single syllable: “I was.”

Now it makes sense why he wants you to leave. There are possibly tens of thousands of credits on his head; bounty hunters roaming the galaxy, searching for rogue Jedi to capture or kill. He has come to Tatooine precisely because it is insignificant, because the sand covers everything, because it is displaced from the Core of the galaxy.

But you don’t want to leave. Ben wants you to be safe, but what is safety if it means leaving what you have come to trust? It’s not worth anything, not to you, not if it means leaving behind something more valuable.

“Do you really want me to leave?” you say.

“What I want doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me,” you reply, and this time, the words are natural to you. They have been waiting to be spoken aloud. “If you really want me to leave, I’ll go. But if you don’t, I want to stay. Here.”

If he had offered you his ship when you didn’t know him, you would have taken it and left with few thoughts to spare for the traveler who came to Tatooine to stay. You would have gone in search of something simultaneously common and rare, and perhaps you would have found it. Perhaps not. But you’ve found it now, in all of its imperfection, in the middle of a desert planet that burns to touch. You don’t want his ship. You’ve already found what you’re looking for.

“Even if it means putting your life at risk?” he says. His voice is always some form of tender, but this time, it’s not just his tone, but way he places words after each other, like they are placeholders for a greater question.

You nod, because even though it’s dark, it feels right to affirm in more than just words. “Even if it means putting my life at risk.”

Ben steps closer, and he reaches out, fingertips tracing the line of your jaw. At his touch, your breathing slows.

“You’re sure?” he says.

You only nod this time, because you know he can feel the movement against his hand. Gently, he angles your face to the side, and you’re suddenly aware of how little space lies between you ― how much distance has been crossed. Then his lips are swooping down and pressing against yours, and your mind goes blank.

In the dim, background white noise of your thoughts, you wonder how he knows your face so well; how he finds you without fail in the pitch darkness. His touch is soft, though his fingertips are rough, and it reminds you of how he treated your wounds. Perhaps that is how he knows the composition of your face.

You don’t think you know what true peace looks like ― not yet ― but here, in the warmth of night, Ben brings you something you have missed: hope.


	6. Soul

It feels like meeting him for the first time, all over again. For so long, you have looked at Ben in the context of Tatooine, framed in dust and sun, a weary exile and forsaken soldier. Far from home and far from himself. It’s strange that you trust him and yet know only shards from his past.

But in the endless night and silence, as you walk through the desert, his presence beside you is steady. Now you know he is a Jedi, but if it doesn’t change the trust between you, it does not define him. You don’t think it has ever defined him, not even before. Ben is here, after all, and though he is not unbroken, he is also not without hope.

 _That’s incorrect_ , you decide. _It doesn’t feel like meeting him for the first time_. It feels like you’ve known Ben for a long time, and even if you can count the days you’ve known him, you can’t place when he became more than stranger, more than ally, more than friend.

You’re exhausted, even though the walk to Anchorhead is not far from the moisture farm. But though the night is dark, the stars are pearlescent, like glass dust against a blanket of soot and ash. And there’s Ben, walking beside you, silent but steady.

Anchorhead is a softly glowing pinprick against the horizon. As you draw nearer, it expands into a settlement of synstone and clay. During daytime, you know it to be populated and stifling, but at night, its streets are half-empty and quiet, light emanating from the bottoms of windowsills and doors.

Once you reach the town, your boots scuff against the ground with every step, your eyes straining to sort through the shadows. Ben finds an inn, and soon, you’re following him up a set of rickety stairs and unlocking the door to a rented room. There’s a bed, a refresher, and a divan, and Ben stands just past the doorway. You step over the threshold, letting the door slide shut behind you, and then there’s silence.

“Take the bed,” Ben says, and though you would normally object out of courtesy, you’re too tired.

You nod once, kick off your boots, and collapse on the bed. It doesn’t matter that the blanket is threadbare or that the mattress is worn thin. You’re tired. You’re tense, too, but it slowly begins to leave your body as you let sleep slide your eyes shut and slow the contraction of your lungs and draw your thoughts far away.

“Goodnight, Ben,” you say, softly, before your consciousness is washed away in a swelling tide of exhaustion.

Vaguely, in the last moments you can remember, you think you hear Ben’s voice, low and tender, and he echoes the same words paired with your name, a farewell while you sink into a deep abyss of rest. Somewhere, in the space between waking thought and intuition, a strange, four-letter word occurs to you, but it is fleeting and old ― a friend you have not seen in a very long time. It is fleeting, but you remember.

You dream of lightning, though it is iridescent and contained and does not disappear in the same moment it arrives. And you dream of bodies of water, simultaneously endless and enclosed in the eyes of a man who looks at you like you are the only person left.

Sometime in the early hours of the morning, you wake up. It’s silent and dark, though the barest hints of light begins to glint through the slits of the closed blinds. You can’t fall back asleep, so you swing your legs off the side of the bed. You pause as you catch sight of Ben.

He’s asleep, not lying down but sitting upright, head tilted back against the wall, eyes closed. He is still, the only movement the slight rise and fall of his chest as he breathes in and out. You’re not sure why there’s something different about Ben when he sleeps ― perhaps he is less on guard.

Slowly, as to not wake him, you shift your weight off the mattress of the bed and place your feet against the ground. You’re quiet, the placement of your feet soft.

But his eyes open a moment later, and he lifts his head off the wall to look at you.

So much for not waking him. “I couldn’t sleep,” you whisper, standing. “Go back to sleep. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“It’s alright,” Ben murmurs, blinking at you. “Why can’t you sleep?”

You don’t know. You’re still tired. There’s a long moment of silence, and then Ben motions for you to come toward him.

“Come on,” he says quietly. “It’s not morning yet.”

Part of you wishes you could make the excuse that the reason why you cross the distance between the two of you so easily is because you’re tired and need the sleep. The other part of you is content to curl up in the remaining space beside Ben.

After that, your eyelids grow heavy again, and you let yourself drift away into unconsciousness. This time, you do not dream, for you only dream about the things that leave you less than whole. And for once, when you know Ben is beside you, you are not missing anything.

//

In the morning, when rays of light filter through the blinds in glowing stripes, you wake up to find your cheek against Ben’s shoulder. Your neck is sore, and so are your legs, from bunching up beside you on the cushion. But for a long moment, you don’t want to move. It’s late morning, but the light that trickles through the window is delicate, illuminating shifting particles of dust like sparks from a fire.

You lift your head off Ben’s shoulder, almost reluctant to exit this half-asleep state of wonder, where the world narrows to dust and specks of light.

Your gaze settles on the bed in the center of the room. You should be guilty for not making good use of it, but you can’t summon regret. Perhaps your body is sore from curling into yourself, and perhaps it’s illogical for two people to sleep on a divan when the room is furnished with a bed, but something about it doesn’t seem right.

Your thoughts are interrupted as Ben shifts, and he blinks in the sunlight for a moment, yawning, and then glances toward you.

“Sleep well?”

His voice makes you smile. He said he was from Coruscant ― you were right that his accent is Coruscanti. “Yes,” you reply, and a small smile works its way onto his face. You’re not sure you can remember the last time you saw him smile.

But here, with light glowing against the blinds of the window; here, where you can sleep without dreaming of lost things, you can believe that Ben is more used to smiling than you think. More accustomed to joy than mourning. It’s another glimpse, another strange part of who he is, and yet you do not struggle to find a place for this new piece.

The morning begins slowly, but by noon, you and Ben are in the middle of the salt flats again, making the long journey back to his home. The trip takes hours of walking under the sun with no cover. Perhaps you have come to expect heat at midday, but you’re reminded that humans are not native to Tatooine, not made to endure the endless heat.

By the end of the trek, it’s afternoon, and when Ben unlocks the door to his hut, you follow him and then collapse into the nearest chair, propping your chin up with one hand, elbow against the dining table. He disappears into the kitchen, and you wonder how he can walk several miles over burning desert and not even pause to sit down. Then you remember that he was a Jedi and a general in the Republic Army.

You also remember why you made this whole trip, all the way to Anchorhead and back. You haven’t forgotten the farmstead, and Owen’s voice when he saw you and Ben, and the briefest glimpse you stole of Luke.

“About Luke,” you say, quietly, when Ben returns from the kitchen with a plate for each of you. Ben pauses in the slightest when you mention Luke’s name, but like everything having to do with him, it’s barely perceptible. “I’m sorry. I never told you that I’d be here for you, but I will.”

Slowly, Ben looks up to meet your eyes, and his gaze is gentle. “I never doubted it,” he says. “You don’t need to say it.”

Your lungs contract when he says those words. “I mean it,” you say, though you have found that words ― an arbitrary set of sounds and letters ― can never be enough to truly embody what you mean when you tell him you’ll be there for him. 

“I mean it, too,” Ben says, and though words are just as arbitrary when shaped by different tongues, his reply sounds like some kind of promise, something that steps beyond the bounds of vocal chords and lung capacity. He sighs, settling in the chair across from you. “We need to talk.”

You look back up at him, unsure of what that means. He watches you. At your silence, Ben continues.

“I know you said you’d stay here,” he says. His house is silent. “But you were tired, and it was dark, and perhaps that decision was made in the moment. You can still take my ship ― go somewhere better than here, find something better than this.”

“I meant it when I said it,” you reply, almost instantly. The prospect of leaving Tatooine forever still tugs on your heart, but it’s overshadowed by something else. Maybe there is somewhere better than here, something better than this, someone better than him, but you don’t know if you can find it. And you don’t want to search, not when you’ve found a home already.

“You don’t understand,” Ben says. “There’s a bounty on my head and I’m wanted by the Empire. Your life is in danger just by being near me.”

“Ben,” you say. Your voice is soft, but not timid, and you watch as his eyes flick to meet yours. “I want to stay here. If...if you’ll have me.”

His eyes soften in that way they do when he looks at you. He’s quiet, and you think he’s searching for words and cannot find the right ones. Finally, he says, “It’s Obi-Wan.”

“What?”

“Obi-Wan,” he says, the corners of his mouth curling into the beginnings of a smile. “That’s my real name. Not Ben.”

“Obi-Wan,” you repeat, testing the syllables of his true name. It’s just a name, you remind yourself, but it feels more significant than that. He is the same person, but perhaps this is his response to your promise. He is saying something like: _This is who I am, if you’ll have me._

Part of you thinks you should be suspicious or alarmed. What else has he hidden from you? You have taken his name as a constant, only to discover that it’s untrue. But it’s just a name, you remind yourself, and you have come to learn that names are poor excuses for people. They’re only labels that enclose lives in inaccurate terms.

“It’ll take some getting used to,” you admit.

Ben ― Obi-Wan, you mean ― simply nods once, and his eyes are still soft, reached by a smile that, for once, is not reminiscent of a different time. For once, he has not defined himself by losses and past lives, but by the present.

And perhaps what you mean when you say, _it’ll take some getting used to_ , is that you will be here, with him, for longer than a brief time, that you’ll be here long enough until you learn to think of him as _Obi-Wan_ and not _Ben_. That is your promise to him.

//

At night, as you sit at the dining table, Obi-Wan removes the last of the bandages from your hand. A jagged scar runs the length of your palm, and the flesh is still tender, but the skin is knit together. Your forehead and cheek have scarred too, but those are thinner and only barely tangible when you run a finger over your hairline and the line of your cheekbone.

He watches you carefully, as if afraid that the scars run deeper than skin, like tally marks on the skin of your soul or wounds carved into your heart.

“It’s fine,” you say. “I don’t mind.”

“You’re alright?” Obi-Wan replies, and from where he stands in front of you, he brushes a stray piece of hair away from your cheek with the pad of his thumb.

You nod, and subconsciously ― or perhaps not ― you lean into his touch. He picks up your hand from the surface of the table, tracing the line of the scar. It’s like an extra crease in your palm. You don’t remember what all the lines are supposed to mean ― something about how long you’ll live ― but there is now an additional line. What it means, you don’t know, but as Obi-Wan studies the scar, you think that it could mean something as unexpected as finding him in the middle of the desert.

Perhaps you have an answer to your question. You have accidentally met him twice, but the time he saved you from certain death was the first time you began to see him as more than a concept or an oddity. That day is sealed in your skin in the form of scars. But even scars fade, too, so you think that perhaps there is some mark on your heart that goes deeper than the injuries you have sustained. In that regard, maybe Obi-Wan is right.

“We found each other,” you say. “Who are we to find each other?” It’s an odd question, a convoluted question, one that no one but the universe can answer.

But Obi-Wan answers anyway, because he has always offered you an answer and a solution. He has never left you empty-handed. “Who are we?” he echoes softly, and he drops your hand back into your lap, his hand coming up to nudge your chin up so that your eyes meet. “The Jedi taught that the Force flows through all life.”

He looks down, collecting his thoughts, and then meets your eyes again. “We’re just souls in temporary bodies, trying to find some other life in so vast a universe. Drawn together by the Force.”

 _Souls_. Maybe that’s what the new line on your palm means, at least to you. It means there is something beyond this life of searching for oceans and stumbling upon strangers; it means there is some meaning to this world of sand and sun. Maybe you can finally put a word on the reason why you are willing to forsake a better life for one with him.

You pull yourself to your feet, standing so close to Obi-Wan that you can make out tiny flecks of gold in the blue irises of his eyes. You’ve never noticed before.

“We found each other,” you say, and it’s so quiet that every word is marked by a soft breath.

Then you’re closing your eyes as his lips press against yours, and the world fades to a massless point of insignificance. _Love_ , you think, because even though that word is dangerous and forgetful, there is no word that can come as close to describing what you have found in him.

Words, as always, are not enough to represent what you truly mean. They are imperfect, like this galaxy, like this love you have found, like you. But here, in the darkness and the desert, you have found a home and a soul to match yours.

It will be enough. It always will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end.
> 
> Without getting too sappy: thank you for going on this journey with me. I'm so grateful to everyone who has read, commented, or left kudos on this fic. Your support is invaluable and has been a huge encouragement in wrapping up the last few chapters. ENIGMA is the first fic I was brave enough to post, so it holds a special place in my heart. Everyone who has enjoyed reading it is a part of that. Thank you.


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